Emily Graves spoke with Mediawatch-UK about the Online Safety Bill

There's a bill going though the House of Lords at the moment, which has been introduced by Baroness Howe and one of the provisions is that this kind of filtering should be opt in; where you have to opt in to see it, rather than the current system of opt out. She wants to bring in an opt-in-to-see-it-if-you-want-to system and I think that's great. We really want to support this bill and do all we can to help it on its path though Parliament.

Emily: This went into the House of Lords on the 14th May this year, so what happens next?

Vivienne: It's quite a long process. It had its first reading in the House of Lords, then it has a second reading debate, it will then go though a committee stage where they sort-of pick it apart line by line; it will then go back to the House of Lords and, assuming that it's all voted though, it will then go to the Commons and go though the whole process again. It's quite a long, drawn-out process, but it is really crucial that we let those people who are in a position to do something about it know the strength of public opinion on this.

Emily: I suppose without public opinion you're not necessarily going to see a change?

Vivienne: Exactly. You know, the wonderful thing about democracy is we can have our say. We are in the position that we can - and in fact we have - set up a website that will enable you to let peers know and say, I really urge you to support this bill because I think it's really, really important; please go along, please support it, please really push it through on its way though Parliament and make a difference.

Emily: What about how education approaches what is found online?

Vivienne: I think that's a different discussion and there's been a lot written in the press recently. A lot of different organisations, the National Association of Head Teachers for one, have come up and said, look it's a case of not if children are going to see pornography online it's when, and this is the situation as it is and we have to do something to educate them. Of course the headlines that came up were, "children get lessons in pornography" and we all thought oooh, because that's the last thing that anybody wants, but I think if we think sensibly about this, particularly teenagers, it's very likely they are going to see this and if we don't give them the tools they need to cope with this, that what they're seeing isn't reality and indeed isn't healthy and isn't right and if we don't talk to them about this kind of fantasy world that they can access online, it can be very damaging. It's not fair on our kids; they're going to be confronted by it unless the situation changes drastically. We need to give them the support to enable them to deal with that.

Emily: So what would you say to any parents, or grandparents, or even children who want to find out more about this, or even look at what they can put on their computers themselves?

Vivienne: I suggest you go to our website safeonline.org.uk. If you're a parent, or a grandparent and you are worried about what you can put on, there's a section on there called Protect Your Child and it will give you lots of information on the various filters available, or just pointers that you might like to think about; what your children might be doing on there that you might not know about. It's a whole new world and they live much more of their lives online than their parents ever did. There's a lot of pointers on there and points to other places you can go to get information and things that you can download. Otherwise talk to your internet service provider. They all provide a filter and you shouldn't have to pay for it, so you can give them a call and it shouldn't be unnecessarily complicated, but hopefully they will be able to help you though the process. The second thing that you can do is go to the website safeonline.org.uk and there's a button there which says, Have Your Say and you can use that to contact a peer and say, "Please support this bill," because I think it's really, really important, so that's something quite useful and quite practical you can do.